Invisible Room Attendants: Outsourcing as a Dispositive of (In)visibility and the Resistance of Las Kellys in Spain

Abstract

Outsourced room attendants have been described as invisible to both guests and management. However, room attendants in Spain have managed to create a movement called Las Kellys, which has raised their visibility and earned them respect in society. The article questions how outsourcing leads to the invisibility of room attendants in Spain and how Las Kellys renders them visible. Based on a study conducted with room attendants who were working at hotels in different parts of Spain in 2020, the results show how outsourcing works as a dispositive that creates invisibility through a socio-spatial and socio-legal segregation, while workers are seen as a number to be managed. Against the dispositive of invisibility, Las Kellys has raised their visibility as social actors to contest these ways of being (in)visible.

Keywords

dirty work dispositive invisible work outsourcing room attendants

Introduction

In Spain, the second most visited country in the world before the COVID crisis (United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO), 2019), the hotel industry is one of the most important sources of employment. While hotels have increased their profits during the last decade, the type of employment generated is characterised as unskilled, with low wages and relative job insecurity (Comisiones Obreras de España (CCOO), 2019). Amongst the reasons behind this contrast between the success of the hotels and job insecurity is the labour reform of 2012, which fostered the creation of multiservice companies and the outsourcing of hotel housekeeping departments (Cañada, 2016, 2018; Godino and Molina, 2019).

Historically, the work of room attendants is characterised as a job with low status and wages, physically demanding and repetitive, and done primarily by women (Hunter and Watson, 2006; Lennon and Wood, 1989; OnsØyen et al., 2009). In addition, since the rise of housekeeping outsourcing in Spain, room attendants have experienced instability in their employment conditions: lower wages, temporary contracts, and a rising workload affecting workers’ physical and mental health (Cañada, 2016, 2018; López-González and Medina-Vicent, 2020).

In this context, some room attendants began to share experiences and support themselves in a Facebook group in 2014, and then created a collective organisation called Las Kellys, a name that comes from the contraction of “la que limpia” (the one who cleans). Since 2015, Las Kellys have made their situation politically visible in Spanish society (López-González and Medina-Vicent, 2020), which is somewhat striking, given the historical invisibility of their job (Hunter and Watson, 2006; Kensbock et al., 2013; Lennon and Wood, 1989; Liladrie, 2010; Morgan and Pritchard, 2019; OnsØyen et al., 2009).

Although invisibility has been a dimension reported in this labour force, the article aims to consider it more dynamically. Based on a qualitative study conducted in 2020 with room attendants in the Las Kellys movement in various locations around Spain, the article explores the effects of outsourcing on workers’ invisibility and how Las Kellys renders them visible. To do so, the article proposes a Foucauldian understanding of outsourcing applying the notion of dispositive (Agamben, 2011; Deleuze, 1989; Villadsen, 2019). This article uses the term “dispositive” to mean a network or ensemble of discourses, norms, devices and objects that balance relationships of power, generating certain manners of viewing and talking about reality and articulating a social order (Deleuze, 1989).

By considering outsourcing as a dispositive, we seek to highlight primarily that it is an ensemble of elements that generate a particular form of viewing and talking about work and workers. In doing so, the study offers a more complex look at the analysis of the room attendants and the apparently invisible, marginalised position they hold in society, traditionally categorised as dirty work (Hughes, 1962) and invisible work (Hatton, 2017). In this form, the authors argue that room attendants’ work is not just rendered invisible, but simultaneously made visible in another way.

Based on the analysis, the article contributes to the consideration of outsourcing as a dispositive that generates: 1) socio-spatial and socio-legal invisibility; 2) a new visibility regime in which the worker, seen as a number, is exposed to supervision; and 3) resistance practices by the room attendants who act as social mediators: Las Kellys.

Outsourcing in the hotel industry

Defined as the transfer of organisational duties and services to external providers, outsourcing is a way to achieve greater organisational flexibility (Altin, 2019). The use of outsourcing can be explained by the entry of large investors into the hotel industry, which, due to the volatility of the market, use flexible organisational formulas to obtain immediate returns (Aguiar and Herod, 2006).

In the literature, this organisational practice has been approached from two angles: a managerial angle, which is concerned with the design, implementation and effectiveness of outsourcing in the business models (Click and Duening, 2005; Domberger, 1998; Lamminmaki, 2008), and a more sociological angle, which emphasises the toxic effects of outsourcing on employment, working conditions and labour relations (Alberti, 2016; Iannuzzi and Sacchetto, 2022; Litwin, 2014; Wills, 2009). In particular, it is the second angle that is explored in this article.

In the case of the Spanish hotel industry, it highlights especially the impact that the outsourcing of the housekeeping departments has had on the employment and working conditions for room attendants (Cañada, 2016, 2018). Authors such as Godino and Molina (2019) estimate that 80% of the room attendants are outsourced in Spain. As a result, there is a notable erosion of the socio-occupational category of the room attendants, who have less stable hiring conditions (Cañada, 2018; Godino and Molina, 2019); and an intensification of individual workloads that affects physical and mental health (Cañada, 2018).

Despite the value of those descriptions regarding the effects of outsourcing on employment and working conditions, there are no studies that analyse the social effects of outsourcing on room attendants’ position or visibility in the workspace.

Dirty work and invisible work

In the literature, room attendants’ work has been considered a form of dirty work (Brody, 2006; Hughes, 1962). Dirty work describes jobs with conditions that are physically, socially or morally dirty or that include aspects that are unpleasant or repugnant to others (Hughes, 1962).

Ashforth and Kreiner (1999) distinguish three components of dirty work: a) the material conditions (jobs dealing with rubbish, death, fluids or similar elements); b) the social conditions, when workers are in contact with stigmatised groups of people or when they have a servile relationship with others; and c) the moral conditions; that is, jobs associated with morally condemned activities or those contrary to social norms. Those components do not refer to specific attributes of the jobs but to repugnance attributed to them by others (Ashforth and Kreiner, 1999).

Dirty jobs are constantly stigmatised and given little social recognition (Brody, 2006; Hughes, 1962; Meara, 1974). Along this line, the literature indicates that the workers themselves, faced with this marginalisation, build a positive assessment of their work that enables them to overcome the social stigma applied to them (Ashforth and Kreiner, 1999; Ashforth et al., 2007; Deery et al., 2019; Simpson et al., 2012).

The social marginalisation of dirty work has relegated it to a relatively invisible place within the social space. That invisibility translates into an occupation with little recognition by senior management (Hunter and Watson, 2006), and daily experiences on the job in which the room attendants feel undervalued by guests and other workers (Kensbock et al., 2013). Beyond a rhetorical use of the notion of invisible work, Hatton (2017) describes this type of work as an activity out of sight, socially marginalised, economically and culturally devalued, and legally unprotected and unregulated (Daniels, 1987; Hatton, 2017). While the convergence of dirty and invisible work is fruitful, it has also led to lesser development and conceptual precision of what invisible work is and what it consists of (Hatton, 2017).

In an attempt to present the notion more precisely, Hatton (2017) reviews and conceptualises the literature on invisible work, describing three mechanisms and dimensions of invisibility: a) socio-cultural invisibility, in which workers tend to be made invisible through ideologies of gender, race, social class or occupational status; b) socio-legal invisibility, in which workers are made invisible through a new legal definition in which their jobs become a non-economic or informal activity; c) socio-spatial invisibility, in which workers are made invisible in the social space of work by changing the location (e.g. remote working).

In the case of room attendants in Spain, the literature has recently described the instability and consequences of outsourcing this labour force (Cañada, 2016, 2018), the fight for the dignity of these workers (Alcalde-González et al., 2021) and the historic invisibility of this female-dominated occupation (López-González and Medina-Vicent, 2020). However, no studies are found that directly address the invisibility of this occupation, tying it to outsourcing practices in the hotel industry.

The Foucauldian dispositive notion

Initially proposed by Michel Foucault without a precise definition, a dispositive is: “a resolutely heterogeneous grouping composed of discourses, institutions, architectural arrangements, laws, administrative measures, scientific statements, philosophic, moral and philanthropic propositions…. [the dispositive] itself is the network that can be established between these elements” (Foucault in Agamben, 2011: 250)¹. According to Foucault, the dispositive has the strategic function of stabilising certain relations of force in a power game associated with knowledge. Thus, the dispositive functions as a conceptual operator that helps map and describe the network in which these relations are expressed (Agamben, 2011).

Discussing the Foucauldian dispositive, Deleuze (1989) characterises it as having four dimensions: two initial dimensions called curves of visibility and enunciation, which constitute the mechanisms that make one see and talk; a third dimension where lines of force are deployed and power-knowledge dynamics stabilise or break the order within a dispositive; and, finally, a fourth dimension of subjectivation, where subjectivity is produced by the preceding lines. In Deleuze’s analysis, the dispositive is open-ended in nature, and there is always a possibility of modifying it through new lines of force.

The open-ended nature of dispositives make resistance possible; that is, the chance to make transformations within and against the dispositive (Raffnsøe et al., 2016; Villadsen, 2019). According to Deleuze, individuals positioned within the dispositive have the potential to reconstitute themselves and rearticulate the dispositive itself (Deleuze, 1989). Villadsen (2019) also highlights this aspect of the Foucauldian dispositive, alluding to the ability of the notion to break from the structure-agency dichotomy based on a much more relational view in which resistance and transformation are possible.

In the literature, the notion of dispositive has offered theoretical and empirical possibilities to understand work and organisational spaces, particularly the power regimes in organisations (Sisto and Zelaya, 2013; Soto et al., 2017b). For instance, Sisto and Zelaya analyse how the system of goals in the health system works as a dispositive that causes the worker to perform in certain ways to fulfil the goals, rendering other tasks necessary to reach those goals invisible in the process. In a similar vein, Soto et al. (2017a) show how public instruments work as socio-technical dispositives that create specific representations about what the public value is, how public servants should work and what kind of relationships they should establish with stakeholders. However, these studies describe the interwoven network of elements which stabilise power, with the place of resistance being less visible within the dipositive.

Playing on that representation of the dispositive as a space in which resistance is possible, the article analyses outsourcing as a dispositive of invisibility and explores how room attendants are rendered invisible and how Las Kellys resist that.

Study design

This article is based on a broader study that focuses on the process of identity building of room attendants in Spain. The research assumed an interpretative approach by which the narratives created by individuals make it possible to understand the work experience (Soto et al., 2017b; Stecher, 2013).

Workers were contacted using a snowball sampling strategy (Coleman, 1958). Firstly, the researchers contacted all Las Kellys associations identified on Facebook and websites. Thus, it was possible to contact a spokesperson for the group in each zone. After this initial contact, two or three more workers were contacted from each local association. Finally, a total of 40 interviews were conducted (See Table 1 for a characterisation of workers interviewed).

Table 1.

Characterisation of workers interviewed.

Case	Work and employment description
Kelly 1	Spanish. 57 years old. Permanent seasonal contract. Worked in Catalonia, at a hotel on the coast without outsourced services.
Kelly 2	Spanish. 47 years old. Permanent seasonal contract. Worked in Andalusia, urban hotel without outsourced room attendant services.
Kelly 3	Honduran. 47 years old. Temporary contract for a transitory services company. Worked in Catalonia at an urban hotel with outsourced services.
Kelly 4	Spanish. 43 years old. Temporary contract for a transitory services company. Worked on the Canary Islands, at a tourist apartment complex.
Kelly 5	Spanish. 61 years old. Permanente seasonal contract. Worked on the Balearic Islands, at a coastal hotel without outsourced services.
Kelly 6	Bolivian. 40 years old. She reported having two jobs: one as a room attendant with a permanent seasonal contract at a hotel and a temporary contract with a temporary job agency. Catalonia; her primary job is at an urban hotel without outsourced services.
Kelly 7	Romanian. 46 years old. Contract with an outsourcing company. Castille-La Mancha, hotel with outsourced services.
Kelly 8	Peruvian. 53 years old. Temporary contract. Andalusia, coastal hotel without outsourced services.
Kelly 9	Spanish. 52 years old. Temporary contract. The Balearic Islands, coastal hotel without outsourced services.
Kelly 10	Spanish. 36 years old. Temporary contract. Andalusia, urban hotel in a tourist area that does not have outsourced services.
Kelly 11	Spanish. 50 years old. Part-time permanent contract with an outsourcing company. Andalusia, urban hotel with outsourced services.
Kelly 12	Spanish. 56 years old. Permanent contract. At the time of the interview, she was not working due to a total physical disability. Andalusia.
Kelly 13	Ecuadorian. 55 years old. Permanent contract. Catalonia, urban hotel with some outsourced services.
Kelly 14	Dominican. 43 years old. Permanent seasonal contract. Catalonia, coastal hotel without outsourced services.
Kelly 15	Ecuadoran. 54 years old. Permanent contract. Catalonia, hotel in urban area. Did not provide information on whether or not there were outsourced services at the hotel.
Kelly 16	Dominican. 42 years old. Permanent contract. Catalonia, urban hotel without outsourced services.
Kelly 17	Dominican. 56 years old. Temporary contract with an external transitory services company. Catalonia, urban hotels with outsourced services.
Kelly 18	Spanish. 27 years old. Permanent part-time contract. Andalusia, hotel in tourist city without outsourced services.
Kelly 19	Spanish. 42 years old. Temporary contract with transitory services company. Andalusia, urban hotels with outsourced services.
Kelly 20	Spanish. 50 years old. Permanent contract with an external multiservice company. Andalusia, urban hotels with outsourced services.
Kelly 21	Spanish. 50 years old. Permanent contract. Canary Islands, coastal hotel without outsourced services.
Kelly 22	Colombian. 51 years old. Temporary contract with a temporary services company. Canary Islands, coastal hotels requiring temporary workers during the high season.
Kelly 23	Spanish. 46 years old. Permanent contract. Canary Islands, coastal hotel requiring temporary workers during the high season.
Kelly 24	Peruvian. 51 years old. Permanent part-time contract. Catalonia, urban hotel without outsourced services. Worked for outsourcing companies during her career.
Kelly 25	Uruguayan. 45 years old. Temporary contract with a temporary services company. Canary Islands, coastal hotels requiring temporary workers during the high season.
Kelly 26	Spanish. 59 years old. Permanent contract. Madrid, urban hotel without outsourced services.
Kelly 27	Spanish. 57 years old. Seasonal contract with a hotel in the Pyrenees region. Hotel without outsourced services.
Kelly 28	Spanish. 47 years old. Permanent contract. Andalusia, coastal hotel without outsourced services.
Kelly 29	Spanish. 50 years old. Contract with an outsourcing company. Catalonia, urban hotels with outsourced services. She has spent most of her career in outsourcing companies.
Kelly 30	Spanish. 59 years old. Permanent contract. Canary Islands, coastal hotel without outsourced services.
Kelly 31	Spanish. 43 years old. Permanent contract. Canary Islands, coastal hotel without outsourced services.
Kelly 32	Argentinean. 39 years old. Temporary contract with a transitory services company. Madrid, urban hotels with outsourced services. She has worked for outsourcing cleaning companies during her career.
Kelly 33	Spanish. 37 years old. Permanent seasonal contract. Catalonia, coastal hotel without outsourced services.
Kelly 34	Spanish. 47 years old. Permanent seasonal contract. Catalonia, coastal hotel without outsourced services.
Kelly 35	Spanish. 55 years old. Permanent seasonal contract. Catalonia, coastal hotel without outsourced services.
Kelly 36	Spanish. 24 years old. Permanent contract. Andalusia, urban hotel without outsourced services. She had experience during her career with outsourcing companies.
Kelly 37	Ecuadorian. 47 years old. Permanent contract. Catalonia, urban hotel without outsourced services. She had experience during her career with outsourcing companies.
Kelly 38	Spanish. 26 years old. Worked at outsourcing companies. No longer worked as a room attendant at the time of the interview. Asturias.
Kelly 39	Spanish. 52 years old. Worked for a transitory services company for four years at different hotels. Andalusia, hotels requiring temporary and outsourced services.
Kelly 40	Colombian. 45 years old. Permanent contract. Canary Islands, coastal hotel without outsourced services.

The greater presence of workers hired directly by the hotels was due to them participating more actively in the Las Kellys movement, as well as having a longer career. These characteristics gave them greater security when exposed as spokeswomen because they were less likely to be fired if found to be standing up for other workers with lesser rights. This also coincides with most of the Las Kellys being Spanish, which probably gives them greater security. Despite the greater presence of workers with stable contracts, many workers talked about experiences of working for an outsourcing company at some point in their careers. Moreover, some workers were aware of the possibility of being outsourced. Considering these elements, their narratives were included to analyse the effects of outsourcing.

Following an initial period of observation in the city of Barcelona in 2019 and early 2020, a working plan was devised to include face-to-face interviews, however, that was modified due to the mobility restrictions and social distancing imposed by the pandemic. Finally, because of the geographical distance of some workers, as well as institutional commitments in undertaking the field work, the interviews were conducted by videoconference between the months of May and November 2020.

Through the interviews, we explored daily work experiences, the experience in Las Kellys, and relations with other social actors (trade unions, employers, and the government). The interviews were recorded and transcribed for analysis, using voice recording only. Both written and verbal informed consent for participation were obtained from each interviewee beforehand. The interviews lasted an average of 1 hour and 30 minutes.

The analysis for the empirical material was based on thematic analysis (Braun and Clarke, 2006). The analyses were conducted using the Atlas.ti qualitative analysis program, version 8.1. This program enabled a uniform body of codes to be managed through the interviews, grouped into categories and analysis networks, thereby linking and generating three themes in relation to visibility and invisibility.

Struggles between the visible and the invisible in the work of room attendants

Based on the analysis of hotel room attendants’ work experience in Spain, our results show there was no single invisibility process, as their work was simultaneously made visible in other ways. Two processes are described: a) a process by which workers were rendered invisible, to be reincorporated into the workspace as numbers to be managed and under more intensive forms of surveillance; b) and a process of individual and collective resistance, where workers played in different positions of (in)visibility.

Action of the (in)visibility dispositive

Outsourcing worked as a dispositive that renders workers visible and invisible in several ways. The narratives of the room attendants expressed two different effects of outsourcing on (in)visibility: the creation of socio-spatial and socio-legal invisibility, and then the creation of an abstract, monitored visibility in which workers are seen as numbers and are exposed to constant surveillance both on and off the job.

Outsourcing and the invisibility of room attendants

Socio-spatial invisibility of room attendants

An initial effect created by outsourcing is a socio-spatial invisibility through exclusion from the workspace. This effect was characterised by a perception of not being part of the social space of the hotel rather than being physically excluded from the building where they worked. The narrative of the outsourced room attendants was that hotel management wants nothing to do with their presence.

In this hotel, management wants nothing to do with us because we are an outsourced company. So, management doesn’t listen to any of our problems, we can’t talk to management (Kelly 20)¹

One effect of outsourcing was that workers lacked representatives on work committees and were thus placed in a position of constant transit in the workspace. This is because outsourced workers were not formally part of the hotel and management did not see or speak about or with them. In that sense, outsourcing influenced workers’ presence, as they were not considered by the management, and room attendants’ problems were no longer seen or discussed by hotels, although they shared the same workspace.

The socio-spatial invisibility of room attendants was also created by a constant transition between hotels, which implied constantly changing their workspace:

They don’t want you. I mean, they throw you out for a year (. . .) Because they send you to one hotel for a year, then another year to another, you never know where you’ll end up, you can’t…. (Kelly 1)

The transition of workers from time to time destroyed any attempt to create a sense of belonging to the workspace. This generated a feeling of being strangers moving from one to another hotel without knowing where they were going next. This transition between hotels has been accompanied by an elimination of spaces in the hotel that used to be available, such as rest areas or dining rooms, as well as adequate work materials:

It is the mediocrity you get from the sort of company associated with but, shall we say, segregated from these hotels; it is the latest way of eliminating all permanent staff to bring in this type of company (. . .) They take away your lunch, your hour’s break or your well-deserved 20 minutes for lunch (Kelly 3)

The absence of specific places and moments to eat or take a break was experienced as a displacement from the social workspace. Thus, outsourcing has created a sense of being abandoned by hotel management, as well as being less visible workers compared with others still working at the hotel.

Socio-legal invisibility

A second effect of outsourcing is a socio-legal invisibility of workers (Hatton, 2017). Outsourcing changed the occupational category of workers, passing from being room attendants to cleaners. This change in the occupational category was experienced as a growing uncertainty caused by the constant threat of outsourcing.

And that’s how I started, until 2012, when Rajoy’s labour reform was enacted (. . .) The hotels lay off their room attendants, their permanent staff, to subcontract (Kelly 37)

The safety and status historically achieved by this labour force were now weakened in the face of the new labour flexibility and outsourcing practices. In that sense, workers who were still a part of the hotels were constantly forced to try to maintain the conditions they had achieved. Meanwhile, the outsourced workers talked about their experience from a present that longs for a past in which employment and working conditions were better.

A general perception of the room attendants was that outsourcing has degraded their trade, turning them into mere workplace cleaners:

Many of them are not hired as room attendants, rather as cleaners or labourers. They are some truly strange situations. I’ve even met one who is classified as a façade cleaner and chimneysweep (Kelly 2)

As shown in the example above, outsourcing was perceived as a socio-legal method of rendering workers invisible by modifying the occupational category and degrading their social status. The option of replacing room attendants with cleaners, in addition to exposing them to the socio-spatial invisibility described, left them beyond the scope of a series of collective bargains and agreements that had been achieved historically. This also put the trade itself at risk of disappearing, as has happened with other jobs, such as valets.

Monitored visibility

Despite the invisibility processes that affect room attendants, Las Kellys reported a paradoxical form of being seen and exposed to supervision and monitoring by management.

Firstly, the room attendants feel that outsourcing creates a numerical representation of their presence; then they talk about greater intensity in supervision practices in the workplace, in contrast with their invisible presence vis-a-vis the guests. Then, following the arrival of Las Kellys, room attendants talk about monitoring outside of workspaces, which discourages attempts to collectivise and fight for their labour rights.

Being just a number

The growing use of outsourcing is partly explained by the entry of large investors into the hotel industry, who are scaling it up to a much more global and quantified form of management (Aguiar and Herod, 2006). This has generated greater distance between the owners, managers and workers in housekeeping departments. Workers were fully aware of these management methods and feel they are treated as exchangeable and expendable numbers:

I know hotels that have their own trade unions, but staff are still being fired. I mean, I don’t know how they’ve done it (. . .) We are numbers, we are not visible people, we are a sector that is there and not there at the same time (Kelly 3)

In doing so, outsourcing has created not just a process of socio-spatial and socio-legal invisibility, but it also has contributed to creating a new regime of visibility of workers; that is, as a number to management.

You’ve worked so hard, given so much there to end up like this, and no one values you or talks to you. In fact, to the hotel you are just a number (Kelly 5)

The feeling of being seen as just a number applied to all workers, narrated as an experience of not being valued as people and professionals by hotel management.

Meanwhile, treating the worker as a number has led to a disregard for the body of work. Indeed, both external and in-house hotel workers said that outsourcing has contributed to intensifying work, affecting their physical and mental health:

You are in a state of stress, which is overwhelming because everything is rushed and the demands have become much greater (. . .) So, obviously, if you have the same number or even more rooms, with all this extra workload, it is more than is humanly possible (Kelly 12)

In a labour force that has historically been exposed to musculoskeletal diseases, there are now also illnesses such as stress and anxiety that have an impact outside of working hours. The high prevalence of illness amongst room attendants can been seen as a consequence of the new regime of viewing workers as numbers, exposing them to increased workloads, with insufficient time to complete the activity.

Invisible to guests, monitored by supervisors

In daily work, workers experienced an ambivalent situation: management requires room attendants to work as invisibly as possible, yet workers also described how they were constantly monitored at work.

Room attendants’ work involves an unstated demand that they draw as little attention as possible to what they do. The purpose of this is to provide guests with a private, intimate space in their room:

When we enter a guest’s room, they have their personal objects there (. . .) Many things you have to be careful of, so as not to break any of this person’s things, so they don’t feel you have intruded on their privacy (. . .) It’s true that you enter and it seems like no one’s there (Kelly 10)

This deference to the guest’s use of the room space means giving up control over daily activity, which requires constant adjustment depending on when guests are absent from the rooms. As a visible coordination mechanism between guests and workers, the “Do Not Disturb” sign, although important, causes anxiety for the worker:

If you have a Do Not Disturb sign, because the guest maybe doesn’t want the cleaning done, they discount the room and it’s not your fault the guest doesn’t want you to clean. (Kelly 10).

Despite the invisible work, room attendants were under constant surveillance. Workers were monitored by the hotel supervisors (the housekeeper) and, in the case of outsourced workers, also by supervisors from the outsourcing company:

You have two, two of them looking at you, the first one the supervisor, who goes around after you, and the housekeeper, who also comes after you (Kelly 11)

This double surveillance was seen as a system of constant exposure and examination of the worker and her work. In that sense, outsourcing has led to an intensification of monitoring by adding another player who controls the work of the external room attendant. Constant surveillance at work generated greater anxiety, particularly because workers realise how much of their work was incomplete and not as good as it should be. Resolving this tension generally leads to physical overexertion. The body was required to work at a constant, frenetic pace for long hours, which were not always recognised as part of the working day (and therefore go unpaid).

Surveillance: between stealth and fear

Surveillance also extends to outside the workspace, and room attendants have become the target of surveillance and negative identification by outsourcing companies and hotels, for example, some hotels sent security personnel to identify if there were workers from the hotel involved in demonstrations organized by Las Kellys. If they discovered workers participating in them, their contracts were not renewed or they were fired. Housekeepers described these surveillance hotels practices as a relevant source of fear.

The room attendants are scared of coming. In fact, we don’t have our own premises, so we always meet in a bar or a square or sometimes at my home (. . .) we are always stealthy (Kelly 21)

The feeling of being subjected to surveillance and identification created an atmosphere of fear. Thus, the most active members of the Las Kellys associations described using stealth to counteract the surveillance, maintaining a degree of secrecy and anonymity in their activities:

The girls are afraid. There’s a great deal of fear. I try to help the girls, but without giving names or anything because they are very afraid. And the letters that are sent to companies to say certain things, are initially sent unnamed (Kelly 7)

Paradoxically, individual invisibility enabled workers to overcome the fear of being singled out by their employers. This fear came, for example from the feeling of being just a replaceable number. Fear paralysed workers from making demands, as they saw themselves in a position of weakness, whether they were directly employed by a hotel or outsourced.

However, to make the complaints effective, workers needed to expose themselves, which was when many were overcome by fear. Consequently, a lot of complaints were hindered by fear of exposure and getting fired, thus creating a vicious circle that maintains the precarious working conditions.

Resisting the dispositive and building a social actor

Against the invisibility dispositive of outsourcing, Las Kellys has found ways to resist and change it. Challenging the processes of invisibility and visibility generated by outsourcing, Las Kellys has become a visible social actor. There are two key dimensions to this social actor: the use of social media as a visibility strategy; and the effects of preserving individual anonymity and creating a sense of pride that empowers the worker.

Social media and visibility work

Part of the success of Las Kellys was due to the visibility of their fight. By exposing their situation on social media, room attendants have become a social actor with a clear voice to denounce their situation. Indeed, raising the visibility of their conditions in the media was seen as one of the movements’ greatest achievements:

(Do you feel they have achieved things?) Yes. Yes. First in having made the work of room attendants visible and in raising travellers’ awareness that when they enter a hotel, the hotel doesn’t clean itself and all this shininess is down to our blood, sweat and tears (Kelly 28)

Room attendants have found how exposing their harsh conditions could reach local and foreign guests, creating a sense of responsibility in their consumption behaviour. Through this exposure, Las Kellys found an important way to gain power over the hotels, as they could affect the image of the service that hotels want to provide.

In the process of becoming a social actor, social media platforms have been very important for creating a visible image. Through Facebook, Twitter or Instagram, Las Kellys has built a consistent profile that has ignited discussions about their conditions:

Now everyone knows who Las Kellys are, and in the past, when there was discussion on social media about the changes in labour law and there was a lot of debate on Twitter, that’s when I put the word Kellys on the table and I saw all the comments that mentioned us (. . .) (Kelly 27)

As a social actor, Las Kellys has found a source for influencing their working conditions. In doing so, they have expanded their labour conflict beyond the workspace or the hotel industry, including society in the process of discussion and rendering their harsh conditions of employment and work visible. In this process, Las Kellys gained the sympathy of Spanish society, creating a source of power to negotiate with hotel companies, trade unions, the government, and other social actors.

Between individual anonymity and pride of being seen as a Kelly

Visibility has provided a source to build a social profile by which room attendants obtain individual confidence. Showing their work and employment conditions has helped to establish a basis on which their experience at work can be recognised and shared with other workers. By doing this, Las Kellys perceived a reduction of fear amongst room attendants, leading to the creation of more Las Kellys groups to dignify their work:

Above all, making ourselves visible lessens the fear, because, although they are afraid, there are more and more associations and collectives, and on a personal level, I think that most of the room attendants I mentioned earlier feel proud to be attendants, creating dignity (Kelly 21)

Although fear was still a present emotion in many narratives of individual room attendants, Las Kellys worked as a shield where workers could find a safe place to demand their rights. For instance, some workers went to protests at hotels where they were not contracted, thus protecting those who worked there:

We did it without trouble, protesting, we did it there, and the workers didn’t go, so they wouldn’t suffer reprisals (. . .) The room attendants from the other hotel went, and this is how we support each other (Kelly 22)

Faced with the employers’ identification and surveillance practices at protests, many Kellys have adopted anonymous, secretive forms of participation. Las Kellys provides a face that keeps individual workers invisible, while as a group they raised their demands and interests. Thus, Las Kellys resisted the surveillance carried out by outsourcing companies and hotels.

While anonymity was a relevant issue for many workers who fear being identified by the hotels, Las Kellys also worked as a visible image that generated pride amongst the workers:

Because Kellys represent an association and we wear a T-shirt. . . and that T-shirt makes us fight for our rights (. . .) When I talk about Las Kellys, I get goose pimples, it is truly something so wonderful that has happened to me (Kelly 31)

Supported by the positive image of Las Kellys, room attendants have found a way to be seen that goes beyond their occupation as room attendants and enabled them to be seen as individuals who have earned the respect of Spanish society through their fight for labour rights.

Discussion: Only rendered invisible? Room attendants and the new regime of visibility for their work

The results of this study show the conflicting nature of outsourcing and its effect on workers’ invisibility in hotel workspaces. The research brings into question the idea of a single invisibility process related to room attendants (Hunter and Watson, 2006; López-González and Medina-Vicent, 2020; OnsØyen et al., 2009), revealing an experience of simultaneous (in)visibility. The analysis suggests that invisibility and visibility processes are complex and mixed socio-spatial and socio-legal effects not only for room attendants in outsourcing companies, but also to room attendants still hired by hotels.

Widespread use of forms of labour outsourcing generates a feeling among workers of not belonging and displacement from workspaces, which can be seen as a socio-spatial form of invisibility (Hatton, 2017). The results show a socio-spatial invisibility process in which the room attendants speak of a new relationship with the workplace, characterised by constantly moving from one hotel to another and the feeling of being a stranger in the workplace. Likewise, there is a sort of socio-legal invisibility that is expressed as a degradation of the socio-occupational category from room attendant to cleaner.

While the model of Hatton (2017) outlines three invisibilisation mechanisms, the study data do not immediately show socio-cultural invisibilisation caused by outsourcing. From a more interpretive perspective, however, it is possible to argue that the socio-legal and socio-spatial forms of invisibilisation caused by outsourcing are crossed by socio-cultural forms of invisibilisation (Hatton, 2017). In fact, studies on hotel workers have already shown that room attendants are characterised by an invisibility that is caused by the confluence of gender, social class and race (Alberti and Iannuzzi, 2022). On top of this, outsourcing and its effects on invisibilisation are added as a layer that formalises and crystallises the socio-cultural invisibilisation of this workforce.

Beyond these invisibility experiences, there is, however, a simultaneous process of rendering the workers visible. Indeed, workers stress the experience of being seen in quantified terms, summarised in the widespread expression of “being just another number”. Shared with other precarious jobs, such as retail workers (Abal, 2014), this sort of visibility creates the perception of being an interchangeable individual. This fear prevents them from participating in associations and trade unions, an effect already described in the literature that analysed the outsourcing phenomenon (Alberti, 2016; Iannuzzi and Sacchetto, 2022; Wills, 2009). Because of this fear, many workers prefer to remain in a position of anonymity and invisibility with regard to the hotels and outsourcing companies.

The regime of (in)visibility created by outsourcing also affects the quality of the cleaning service. The fact that management sees room attendants as numbers allows them to organise the process of cleaning in hotels without considering the difficulties related to this work. Indeed, Las Kellys has highlighted the contradiction between the number of rooms to clean and the time available to do this, in most cases affecting the quality of the service. This tension is resolved by the worker working faster, which has consequences on their bodies through musculoskeletal diseases and mental health issues such as stress or anxiety (Cañada, 2018).

Despite the negative effects of (in)visibilisation, it is also possible to see certain gains from being invisible. In fact, the representation of workers in numerical terms enables them to remain somewhat anonymous, facilitating their participation in protests against other hotels in which they do not work. This strategic use of visible and invisible positions can be compared with what Wasserman and Frenkel (2020) point out in their study of systems of (in)visibility that religious women in the IT profession are exposed to, showing how they have agency to move strategically, making themselves visible in one way or another. This strategic movement between visible and invisible makes it possible precisely to discuss and argue the pertinence of the dispositive notion to consider and analyse outsourcing as an (in)visibility dispositive also provides an opportunity to respond to these processes (Deleuze, 1989; Villadsen, 2019).

Las Kellys has found ways to break or crack the dispositive of (in)visibility created by outsourcing, contesting the regime of (in)visibility over them, as well as providing other forms of seeing and speaking about their work. Against the dispositive that renders them invisible, Las Kellys has built a social actor that repositions the room attendant, at least symbolically, as the structural foundation of the hotels (Alcalde-González et al., 2021; López-González and Medina-Vicent, 2020). Based on this affirmation and visibility as a critical function of the hotels, Las Kellys has established dialogues with the employer’s association, the government and the trade unions to stop outsourcing room attendants and to reposition room attendants as direct employees of the hotels. This has brought tension to the industry trend of outsourcing housekeeping departments, with greater attention brought to the plight of all room attendants, intensifying social criticism and implementing regulatory entities by the State and the different actors. Thus, the Las Kellys movement emerges as a social actor through which to dispute their working conditions in the political arena (López-González and Medina-Vicent, 2020).

Conclusions

Research has shown that outsourcing works as a dispositive that triggers two dimensions. The first of them can be divided into the following operations: a) a socio-spatial one that excludes room attendants as members of the social space of the hotel; b) a second socio-legal one that modifies the occupational category of the room attendants and makes the cleaners; and c) a third one that renders them visible as just numbers to be managed quickly and efficiently. The second dimension includes two operations: a) producing a monitored invisibility through which room attendants, invisible to the guests, are exposed to constant monitoring by their supervisors; and b) the extension of monitoring beyond the workplace.

Against the above, Las Kellys deploys practices of resistance that enable them to create a new visibility regime in which, on the one hand, they appear to society as central social actors in the hotel activity and, on the other, as strategic agents on the political stage. In this sense, this work opens up lines of future research. The first could show how the resistance practices are contributing to building a unique identity for room attendants in Spain. The second is related to analysing how these dynamics are being received by other social agents: managers, guests, and other kinds of workers in hotels.

Footnotes

Funding

This work is part of the PhD of the main author Alan Valenzuela who is funded by the National Agency for Research and Development (ANID) / Scholarship Program / DOCTORADO BECAS CHILE/2018 – 72190225.

ORCID iD

Alan Valenzuela-Bustos

Notes

Alan Valenzuela-Bustos is a PhD student at the Autonomous University of Barcelona. His research interests include work and organisations, organisational space, and work identities.

Ana Gálvez-Mozo is Senior Lecturer of Organizational and Work Psychology at the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC). Her research interests include work precarity, gender, work-life balance, telework and non-standard forms of employment.

Verna Alcalde-González is a predoctoral researcher at the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya. His research interests include sociology of work, trade unionism, and social movements.

References

Abal

(2014) Ser solo un número más. Buenos Aires: Biblos.

Agamben

(2011) ¿Qué es un dispositivo? Sociológica 73: 249–264.

Aguiar

Herod

(2006) The Dirty Work of Neoliberalism: Cleaners in the Global Economy. Hoboken, NJ: Blackwell Publishing.

Alberti

(2016) Moving beyond the dichotomy of workplace and community unionism: the challenges of organising migrant workers in London’s hotels. Economic and Industrial Democracy 37(1): 73–94.

Alberti

Iannuzzi

(2020) Embodied intersectionality and the intersectional management of hotel labour: the everyday experiences of social differentiation in customer-oriented work. Gender, Work & Organization 27(6): 1165–1180.

Alcalde-González

Gálvez-Mozo

Valenzuela-Bustos

(2021) No clean rooms, no hotel business: subversion tactics in Las Kellys’ struggle for dignity in hotel housekeeping. Annals of Tourism Research 91: 103315.

Altin

(2019) Does resource-based view explain outsourcing intention: revenue management perspective. Tourism Economics 27(2): 292–306.

Ashforth

Kreiner

(1999) “How can you do it?”: dirty work and the challenge of constructing a positive identity. Academy of Management Review 24(3): 413–434.

Ashforth

Kreiner

Clark

Fugate

(2007) Normalizing dirty work: managerial tactics for countering occupational taint. Academy of Management Journal 50(1): 149–174.

10.

Braun

Clarke

(2006) Using thematic analysis in psychology. Qualitative Research in Psychology 3(2): 77–101.

11.

Brody

(2006) The cleaners you aren’t meant to see: order, hygiene and everyday politics in a Bangkok shopping mall. Antipode 38(3): 534–556.

12.

Cañada

(2016) Externalización del trabajo en hoteles, impacto en los departamentos de piso. Barcelona: Alba Sud Editorial.

13.

Cañada

(2018) Too precarious to be inclusive? Hotel maid employment in Spain. Tourism Geographies 20(4): 653–674.

14.

Click

Duening

(2005) Business Process Outsourcing: The Competitive Advance. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley.

15.

Coleman

(1958) Relational analysis: the study of social organizations with survey methods. Human Organization 17: 28–36.

16.

Comisiones Obreras de España (CCOO) (2019) Análisis de la actividad del turismo en España. España: CCOO Servicios.

17.

Daniels

(1987) Invisible work. Social Problems 34(5): 403–15.

18.

Deery

Kolar

Walsh

(2019) Can dirty work be satisfying? A mixed method study of workers doing dirty jobs. Work, Employment and Society 33(4): 631–647.

19.

Deleuze

(1989) ¿Qué es un dispositivo? En: Foucault

(ed.) filósofo. Barcelona: Gedisa, 155–163.

20.

Domberger

(1998) The contracting organization: A strategic guide to outsourcing. OUP Oxford.

21.

Godino

Molina

(2019) Who Overcomes Collective Bargaining? Outsourcing Practices and Regulation in Spain. Barcelona: RECOVER Policy Paper.

22.

Hatton

(2017) Mechanisms of invisibility: rethinking the concept of invisible work. Work, Employment and Society 31(2): 336–351.

23.

Hughes

(1962) Good people and dirty work. Social Problems 10(1): 3–11.

24.

Hunter

Watson

(2006) Service unseen: the hotel room attendant at work. International Journal of Hospitality Management 25(2): 297–312.

25.

Iannuzzi

Sacchetto

(2022) Outsourcing and workers’ resistance practices in Venice’s hotel industry: the role of migrants employed by cooperatives. Economic and Industrial Democracy 43(2): 877–897.

26.

Kensbock

Jennings

Bailey

Patiar

(2013) “The lowest rung”: women room attendants’ perceptions of five-star hotels’ operational hierarchies. International Journal of Hospitality Management 35: 360–368.

27.

Lamminmaki

(2008) Accounting and the management of outsourcing: an empirical study in the hotel industry. Management Accounting Research 19(2): 163–181.

28.

Lennon

Wood

(1989) The sociological analysis of hospitality labour and the neglect of accommodation workers. International Journal of Hospitality Management 8(3): 227–235.

29.

Liladrie

(2010) “Do not disturb/please clean room”: hotel housekeepers in Greater Toronto. Race & Class 52(1): 57–69.

30.

Litwin

(2014) Cleaning Up: How Hospital Outsourcing Is Hurting Workers and Endangering Patients, by D. Zuberi. Work and Occupations 41(4): 518–520.

31.

López-González

Medina-Vicent

(2020) Las Kellys y el turismo: de la invisibilidad del cuidado a la visibilidad política. Digithum 25: 1–13.

32.

Meara

(1974) Honor in dirty work. Sociology of Work and Occupations 1(3): 259–283.

33.

Morgan

Pritchard

(2019) Gender matters in hospitality (invited paper for “luminaries” special issue of International Journal of Hospitality Management). International Journal of Hospitality Management 76: 38–44.

34.

OnsØyen

Mykletun

Steiro

(2009) Silenced and invisible: the work-experience of room-attendants in Norwegian hotels. Scandinavian Journal of Hospitality and Tourism 9(1): 81–102.

35.

Raffnsøe

Gudmand-Høyer

Thaning

(2016) Foucault’s dispositive: the perspicacity of dispositive analytics in organisational research. Organisation 23(2): 272–298.

36.

Simpson

Slutskaya

Lewis

Höpfl

(eds) (2012) Dirty Work: Concepts and Identities. London: Palgrave Macmillan.

37.

Sisto

Zelaya

(2013) The ethnography of devices as an analysis tool and study of managerialism as local practice. Universitas Psychologica 12(4): 1345–1354.

38.

Soto

Fardella

Valenzuela

Carvajal

(2017a) Las funciones performativas de los instrumentos en las redes de acción pública. Psicoperspectivas 16(3): 76–86.

39.

Soto

Stecher

Valenzuela

(2017b) Interpelaciones identitarias en el trabajo: Propuesta para la comprensión de los procesos de construcción de la identidad laboral. Estudos de Psicologia 34(1): 25–39.

40.

Stecher

(2013) Un modelo critico interpretativo para el estudio de las identidades laborales. Contribuciones a la investigación psicosocial sobre trabajo y subjetividad en América Latina. Universitas Psychologica 12(4): 1311–1324.

41.

United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) (2019) Panorama del turismo internacional, edición 2019. Retrieved July 20, 2020, from https://www.e-unwto.org/doi/pdf/10.18111/9789284421237

42.

Villadsen

(2019) “The Dispositive”: Foucault’s concept for organisational analysis? Organisation Studies 42(3): 473–494.

43.

Wasserman

Frenkel

(2020) The politics of (in)visibility displays: ultra-orthodox women manoeuvring within and between visibility regimes. Human Relations 73(12): 1609–1631.

44.

Wills

(2009) Subcontracted employment and its challenge to labour. Labour Studies Journal 34(4): 441–460.